


Everything's Jake

by Isis



Category: State Farm Insurance "Back in the Office" Commercial, State Farm Insurance "State of Unrest" Commercials
Genre: Gen, Magical Realism, Transformation, low-key horror, low-key humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27939842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: It's not just a job, it's a ... transformative experience.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 51
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Everything's Jake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shnuffeluv](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shnuffeluv/gifts).



The ring of the phone in the kitchen was a welcome interruption to the – well, Marcus wouldn’t call it an argument, not exactly, but it was definitely a heated conversation. Lucy had not taken the news well. He couldn’t blame her; it was bad timing, for sure.

“I’ll get it,” he said, and he got up from the sofa and crossed into the kitchen. “This is Marcus Jessup, hello?”

“Hi, Marcus!” came the cheery voice on the other end of the line. “This is Jake, from State Farm. How are you doing today?”

Stupid telemarketer, he thought. _You want to know how I’m doing? Well, I’m gonna tell you._ “As a matter of fact, not so great. I just got laid off.”

“That’s a shame,” said Jake from State Farm. He sounded appropriately sympathetic. “You know, if you’re out of work, you’re probably looking for ways to save money. And State Farm can give you great rates. In fact, I’m sure we can beat your current car insurance rates – and if you want to get our homeowner’s or renter’s coverage, too, we can give you an even better deal.”

“I don’t have a job any more. I’m probably gonna have to _sell_ my car,” said Marcus, annoyed that the salesman hadn’t taken the hint and hung up. “Or maybe move me and my wife – who, I might add, is _expecting_ – out of this apartment _into_ my car. Can you get me homeowner’s insurance on my crappy old Pathfinder? Is _that_ gonna be an even better deal?”

There was a short pause. Then: “We could certainly write you a policy for homeowner’s insurance on your Pathfinder. Or…” Jake from State Farm’s voice trailed off, thoughtfully.

“Or what?” demanded Marcus.

“Or you could come work for State Farm.”

Marcus laughed. “Come on, man. I was a cashier at Office Depot. I don’t know nothing about insurance.”

“That’s not a problem. We’ve got a great training program. And it sounds like you need a job.”

“Huh. I guess I could apply, if you’re looking to hire.”

“I think you’ll be a great fit,” said Jake from State Farm, and he really did sound happy about it, which was weird, thought Marcus, because what did Jake from State Farm know about him? Other than that he drove a crappy old Pathfinder, his wife was pregnant, and he’d just been laid off. “Just go to our website – that’s statefarm dot com slash careers. All the information you need to apply is right there.”

“You get a commission? Should I tell them that Jake sent me?”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Jake from State Farm. “They’ll know.”

As he hung up the phone, Lucy came into the room. “Who was that?”

“Jake from State Farm.”

She rolled her eyes. “Did you tell him you’re not buying any insurance, on account of you don’t have a job?”

Marcus smiled. “Well, as a matter of fact...”

* * *

Much to his surprise, he got a letter from State Farm only two days after he filled out the on-line application.

_Welcome to the State Farm Family! We’re very happy to have you on board._

“I got it,” he said aloud. He tested the sound of the words in his mouth. “I got the job.”

Lucy looked skeptical. “No interview?”

“Guess not. They want me to report for training next Monday.” He scanned down the sheet of paper. “Good pay. Good benefits. We do have to switch our insurance to State Farm, though.”

“I think we can manage that,” said Lucy. She leaned over and gave his arm a squeeze. “I mean, _I_ know you are a quality human being, babe. I’m just impressed this big corporation figured it out, too, with only your application to go on.”

“Well, Jake from State Farm recommended me.”

“Jake from State Farm! I swear, you two are best buddies, and you’ve only talked once on the phone. And _that_ was because he was trying to sell you insurance!”

Marcus grinned. “Guess it worked, didn’t it?”

“I guess it did,” said Lucy, shaking her head. “I guess it did.”

* * *

“Welcome to the State Farm Family,” said the smiling white woman at the desk. Her dark hair was tied back in a perky ponytail, and Marcus could see her earrings, little silver cats hanging from her earlobes by their curved tails. She wore khakis and a red sweater with the State Farm logo, three ovals in a triangular stack. “I’m Jenny. Let’s get you started.”

She handed him a pen and a clipboard with a few pages on it, and he sat at the low table she indicated and began to fill out the forms. Address, marital status, beneficiary...shirt and pants sizes?

“Excuse me,” he said, looking up from the paperwork. “Why do you need my clothing sizes? I thought I was just going to be calling people on the phone. They’re not going to see what I look like.”

“Well, of course you are!” she said brightly. “But it’s part of our culture here at State Farm. As you can see, we all wear the State Farm uniform.” She gestured to the logo on her sweater. “I find that it’s _much_ easier to get into the proper mindset for helping our neighbors as a State Farm representative if I’m dressed for the occasion. And I’m sure _you_ will feel the same!”

It was kind of weird, thought Marcus. She talked like someone on TV – like someone in a State Farm commercial, really. He was pretty sure he’d seen a few commercials for State Farm, full of smiling people with red sweaters assuring nervous homeowners that of course their fine china would be covered, or that their car insurance rates wouldn’t go up just because their 16-year-old daughter was learning to drive. 

He wasn’t too excited about having to wear a uniform again. The Staples uniform had been a red shirt, too, though the pants had been black rather than khaki. His co-workers had joked that they were like the poor crewmen on the Enterprise who got killed each episode, the extras in the red shirts. Sighing to himself, he filled in his sizes. _Guess I’m going to be a doomed crewman again._

When he’d finished with the forms he got up and handed the clipboard back to Jenny, who gave him a red three-ring binder holding a sheaf of pages at least three inches thick. The cover was printed with the State Farm logo, and below it, in large black letters, it said:

TELEPHONE PROCEDURES  
JAKE FROM STATE FARM

“This is Jake’s binder?” he asked.

Jenny gave him another one of those blinding smiles. Her teeth were a shining, perfect white. “Don’t worry about that for now. You can get started looking over the manual now, if you want, while I call over to Supply and get you outfitted.”

Marcus was still looking at the cover. “Doesn’t Jake need this, though? He still works here, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, yes,” said Jenny, waving her hand vaguely. “Don’t worry, we’ve got lots of manuals.”

He sat down and opened the binder. It was filled with pages and pages, paragraphs of dense text followed by arrows and page numbers and an occasional IMPORTANT! note in red ink, in a font that looked like handwriting but was so clear and uniform that it was obviously printed to just _look_ like someone had written in the margins. It was like a choose-your-own-adventure, all the scripts of what to say followed by pages of responses that varied according to how the person you were talking to answered. There were a _lot_ of scripts. He hoped they wouldn’t make him start calling people right away, because there was no way someone would buy insurance from a salesman who had to take five minutes to look up the answer to every question. 

After he’d leafed through the binder for a few minutes, feeling more bewildered the more he looked at it, the door at the back of the room opened, and a woman stepped through and beckoned to him. She was older, with close-cropped hair going gray, and she wore a red sweater and khakis and carried a large cloth shopping bag with the State Farm logo on it. “We’re ready for you now.”

Marcus got up. “You want this back?” he said to Jenny, holding up the binder.

“You hang on to it. You’re going to need it at your desk,” she said, with another of those thousand-watt grins, and he followed the woman through the door.

* * *

“It’s great to have you in the State Farm Family,” said the woman, as they walked down a short corridor. At the end was a door, which she opened to reveal a room with rows of large lockers against each side wall. The wall opposite where they’d entered had six doors with little lights next to them. All of the lights were green save the one on the far left, which was red. “I’m Jenny. Let’s get you outfitted.”

“Wait a minute,” said Marcus. “I thought the other lady was Jenny? The one behind the desk?”

She didn’t even break stride. “She’s Jenny in charge of reception. I’m Jenny in charge of intake. All right, L18. Here’s your locker.” She came to a halt in front of the locker marked L18, which had a key in its lock, and handed him the shopping bag. “Here are your new State Farm clothes. When you leave for the day, just leave your clothes in the locker. On Fridays, and any other day you feel they need laundering, leave the key in the lock when you go home, and our laundry staff will clean and press them and return them to the locker.”

“Convenient,” said Marcus. He looked in the bag. Red sweater, white button down shirt, and khakis, all neatly folded. 

“You can use one of the changing rooms – the lights show if they’re open or occupied. We’ve got staggered clock-in and clock-out times so there should be one open whenever you need it. I’ll wait out here for you. Just holler if you need a different size.”

He headed for the changing rooms. Just as he got to the door of the one he’d chosen (third from the right), the leftmost light changed from red to green and a white man walked out, dressed in the State Farm uniform. He nodded to Marcus, then proceeded across the room. “Hi, Jenny,” he said as he passed her.

She smiled and nodded to him. “Hi, Jake.”

His hand on the changing room door, Marcus paused. “Jake?” He turned, but Jake was already across the room, disappearing through a door next to the one Marcus and Jenny had come in. He looked at Jenny. “I’d like to talk with him, thank him for his help.”

“You’ll get your chance while you’re working. Now, why don’t we see how those clothes fit?”

* * *

“So how was the training?” asked Lucy, as she put a plate of spaghetti in front of Marcus. “You know all about insurance now?”

“I’m _never_ going to know all about insurance. They gave me a binder this thick,” he said, holding his hand up with his fingers as wide as they could go, “all the things I’m supposed to say to people to get them to go with State Farm.”

“Did you bring it home to study?”

“Nah, they told me to leave it in my locker.” He frowned. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t actually remember anything in it. He’d put on the State Farm clothes, followed Jenny out to the cubicle maze where she’d shown him his desk, and then...it all got kind of hazy in his memory. 

“What’s wrong, Marcus? You decided you don’t like selling insurance?” She took her seat on the other side of the small table and looked over at him anxiously. “I mean, it’s okay if you don’t like this job, you can sure go look for another, but I was thinking it was like a gift from heaven.”

“No, it’s not that.” He shook his head, trying to clear it. “Just been a long day, that’s all. It’s all jumbled up in my head now, all the policies and regulations and stuff.”

“That’s good. Your co-workers nice? You get to meet your buddy Jake?”

“Oh, yeah. Jake’s at the cubicle next to mine. And there’s Jenny, she’s the supervisor, she’s real nice, too. And…” He stopped, shook his head again. There was Jake, and there was Jenny, and he was sure there were more people who worked there, and they had all smiled at him and said how nice it was that he was part of the State Farm family. But for some reason he couldn’t actually remember anyone in particular, just as he couldn’t remember exactly what he had done all day.

“Well, that sounds great,” said Lucy, a relieved smile crossing her face. “Would you pass the parmesan?”

* * *

On Thursday Lucy asked him to stop by the grocery store and pick up a few things on his way home. He left a note to himself on the Pathfinder’s dash, just in case he forgot. He was feeling a bit fuzzy-headed lately, which he attributed to having to wake up an hour earlier for his shift at State Farm than he had at Office Depot. 

He was in aisle #8 (coffee and tea on the left, cereal boxes and peanut butter on the right) when he spotted a familiar-looking woman with a dark ponytail coming in the opposite direction. “Hey, Jenny,” he said.

Jenny looked up at him, her face wrinkled in confusion. “Sorry, you must have mistaken me for someone else?”

He almost apologized and left, but he saw the silver cats swinging from her ears. Of course it was her. “I’m Marcus? I just started working at State Farm?”

Her face cleared a little, but she still looked as though she wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about. “Oh, yeah, hi. I’m sorry I didn’t remember you, but I talk to a lot of people at work each day.” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “You know how it is. And it’s okay, but you got my name wrong – I’m Barbara.”

Marcus shook her hand, feeling confused and embarrassed himself. He was pretty sure that when she’d introduced herself at the office, she’d said her name was Jenny.

* * *

The week went by, then another. Marcus had to admit he liked working at State Farm better than he had at Office Depot. He got to sit in a cubicle, for one thing, instead of being on his feet all day. All he did was make phone calls and fill out forms.

At least, he _thought_ that was what he did. The weird thing was that when he headed to his Pathfinder at the end of the day, he found his workday dissolving in his head, the way dreams did when you woke up. He remembered little snatches of conversation, and sometimes clients’ names – especially when they’d called in with an unusual claim, like the guy who’d had a tree fall across the back of his pickup truck in a storm – but by the time he pulled into the parking lot at his apartment complex, he’d usually forgotten most of it.

But he wasn’t going to complain. The money was good, and the benefits – especially the insurance, of course – were excellent. And with the baby coming, they needed it. Lucy had told him it was okay if he wanted to buy a newer car, but he was thinking it made more sense to put extra in the bank, just in case. And if things stayed good, and they were careful about money, maybe they’d have a down payment for a place of their own in a couple of years.

* * *

The blue light on his phone lit up just before he finished his call. “Thanks for choosing State Farm,” he said to the woman on the other end. “Just give us a call back if you need anything.” He toggled the END CALL button, made a note on his call sheet, and then hit O for Jenny in reception. “This is L-eighteen.”

“Hi, Jake,” said Jenny. “Your wife’s okay – she told me to say that, first thing – but she needs you to come home right away.”

A strange, unsettled feeling bubbled up from his gut. “I don’t get off for another hour,” he said.

“It’s all right, you got eight hours of personal time when you started, with another hour accrued every pay period. I’ll mark it on your time sheet so you’ll get paid. Go on home now, Jake. She says you should hurry, get home as soon as you can.”

He hung up the phone. He still felt weird. He wasn’t supposed to leave until his shift was over. But Jenny had told him to, so he guessed it was okay.

He got up and headed for the door to the locker room. L18, that was his. He opened his locker to get his clothes, then turned toward the changing rooms.

Every door had a red light next to it.

Shit. Jenny had said to hurry. _Well, maybe it wouldn’t matter just this once if I went home in my State Farm red sweater and khakis._ He grabbed his wallet and keys from his jeans pocket and stuck them into the pocket of his khakis, then closed his locker and headed for the door to reception.

“Jake!” called Jenny as he strode through the reception area. “You didn’t –”

“No time,” he called back, racing through the outer door and into the parking lot. Jenny was still saying something but he tuned her out. His wife needed him.

For some reason he almost walked by his Pathfinder. He scolded himself as he unlocked the door and got in. _You wife needs you, and you forget what car you drive? Focus, you’ve got to focus._ He was tempted to floor it through town but if he got pulled over, it would only make him later, so he made sure to keep to the speed limit, stop at the lights and the stop signs. He had a moment of sudden panic as he idled at the red light at Lincoln Avenue – _wait, where am I going? Do I go straight here or turn? Right or left?_ – but then the light changed and he drove on without thinking about it, making the turn at Henderson and then pulling into the apartment complex parking lot. 

He parked, leapt out, and ran to his building and up the steps to his door. “I’m here,” he called through the door as he unlocked and opened it, “I’m here!”

“Oh, thank goodness,” said the attractive woman sitting on the couch. She got to her feet carefully; she was very pregnant. “I think my water broke, babe. I know, it’s early. Get me to the hospital?”

He stared at her for a moment, then looked around the room. Confusion washed through him again. Things seemed familiar, but also strange; like he was looking at a stage set, at a room he’d seen in a television show but never actually been inside. Had he come to the wrong apartment? No, his feet had taken him here, his key had opened the door. This must be the place. 

Which meant this woman must be...his _wife_. Of course he was married – and Jenny had said his wife needed him. Jake looked at her again. Her name bubbled up from somewhere inside of him: _Lucy_. 

“Lucy,” he said experimentally.

“Yes, Marcus, I need you to get me to the hospital.” Something pinged him; it was the name she called him, _Marcus_. It was vaguely familiar. But how could he be Marcus? He was Jake, wasn’t he?

“Marcus? You all right?”

He frowned. There was something trying to get through the noise in his head, something he couldn’t quite place. If only he could grasp it, everything would be all right.

“Come _on_ , babe!” she said again. She was sounding exasperated, and maybe a little panicked, too. “You’ve got to drive me to the hospital. Unless that fancy new State Farm insurance covers ambulance service?”

His head cleared; the confusion vanished. He stepped forward confidently and took her hand. State Farm insurance – now _that_ was something he knew all about. And if he could upsell her to supplemental, maybe he’d get a promotion!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my betas R, S and Y! And in case you're not up on your 1920s slang, ["Jake" was slang for "okay" or "fine."](https://ourcommunitynow.com/local-culture/slang-terms-from-the-1920s-that-we-need-to-bring-back-100-years-later)


End file.
